So, a rudimentary jailbreak for Windows RT made its way onto the web these past few days. Open source applications were ported right away, and it was confirmed that Windows RT is the full Windows - it's exactly the same as regular Windows, except that it runs on ARM. Microsoft responded to the jailbreak as well.

For me, the potential for running the same apps on desktop and tablet (and hopefully phone in the future) holds a lot of appeal.

But you can't, can you? Save for a "handful" of brand new Metro apps, the vast bulk of Windows software doesn't run on both. Essentially, it's like saying that you're going to buy a computer now in the hopes that at some point in the future you hope somebody will develop something that will run on both your tablet and your PC.

Well, of course I can't do that YET, which is the reason why I'm still running Android And I'm not even sure Metro will pan out into a mature ecosystem, but I hope it does.

If you're developing an app for grocery lists that integrates across devices, you'd be crazy to tie it to some Windows-specific functionality (and automatically kill most of your market). Most all software is developed in two tiers here, a generic back-end, and a specific UI front-end. Metro only lowers the barriers for UI design, but it in no way eases the problems with data sharing.

I think you're missing the point here. I tried about a dozen different grocery apps on Android until I found one I liked. But it has absolutely no online sync functionality whatsoever, so I can't input items on my computer with a real keyboard, as I would like. The todo list app I use DOES have online sync, but the web interface is kind of janky. I guess I could use something like Bluestacks, but then how do I get my data and settings over to the phone/tablet? Now, if all the Android apps I used where I wished to have interoperability with my desktop had slick web frontends that made data input seamlis on the desktop, you and I would not be having this conversation, except for apps like Google Plus et al, where I want desktop notifications WITHOUT needing a goddamn extension for whatever browser I'm using.

With Metro, every app that you have on a tablet will automatically work on the desktop, and most of them let you save to Skydrive, which makes swapping back and forth a breeze. I'm hoping they'll eventually port all this to Windows Phone as well.

Obviously, I understand that this is mostly theoretical at this point, since there aren't a lot of useful apps out yet. I'm just speaking of the potential of it all and why I am excited about Metro, not what the situation is right now. If I'm running Windows-only devices, I don't care if the stuff uses only Windows technology. In fact, I would consider that a bonus.